On February
2, 1993, the Seattle Times published an article “Big business
helped solidify push for revamping education.” The following is a quote
from that article:

“When Gov. Mike
Lowry wavered in his support for the reform plan, [Frank] Shrontz, legislative
leaders and other reform advocates visited him. Boeing executives told
the new governor they wouldn’t support a tax increase if it didn’t include
funding for education restructuring — a message that brought the governor
solidly back into the fold.”

Frank
Shrontz was then the CEO of the largest manufacturer of commercial airplanes
in the United States — Boeing — based out of Seattle in western Washington.

In the
years following, Shrontz and other Boeing executives sat on every education
and workforce training committee, council, board, commission and restructuring
team brought together by Washington State elected officials. They donated
space at their Tukwila facility to house the Washington Commission on
Student Learning. They donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to various
projects, including those in which the National Center on Education and
the Economy (NCEE) and its founder and head, Marc Tucker, were involved,
such as the Washington Alliance for Restructuring Education (WARE). Boeing
employees would leave their jobs with Boeing to accept governor appointed
high-paying jobs in the Washington State bureaucracy in Olympia. Monetary
concessions were made to Boeing at the expense of Washington taxpayers
to include the establishment of the Employment and Training Trust Fund
providing $70 million in taxpayer money for the benefit of laid off Boeing
workers.

From
the Boeing website
comes the following revelation regarding Boeing and education:

“In addition to
school support, Boeing is committed to a performance-based educational
system and is involved in initiatives at local, state and national levels.
The company contributes to educational reform through corporate and
personal leadership and financial support.“

Frank
Shrontz also held powerful connections outside the state, including sitting
on the board of the New American Schools Development Corporation or NASDC.
In that capacity, Shrontz helped choose the design teams that would implement
a “thorough-going redesign of America’s schools.” One of those design
teams was the National Alliance for Restructuring Education (NARE), a
project of Marc Tucker’s National Center on Education and the Economy
(NCEE).

On February
2, 1992, Booth Gardner in his capacity as the Governor of Washington State
and Member of the National Education Goals Panel; Judith Billings in her
capacity as the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction
and Member of the New Standards Project Board of Directors (another organization
of NCEE); and Brian Benzel in his capacity as Chairman of the Governor’s
Task Force on Schools for 21st Century, Superintendent of the Edmonds
School District and Member of the National Council on Education Standards
and Testing, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NARE and Marc Tucker
to oversee the “design of ‘break the mold’ public schools” in Washington
State. This was before the Washington Legislature passed ESHB 1209 officially
bringing education reform to Washington State in 1993.

Remember
that it was a commission of NCEE — the Commission on the Skills of the
American Workforce (CSAW) — that wrote the infamous America’s Choice:
high skills or low wages! report in which it is stated,

“But in a broad
survey of employment needs across America, we found little evidence
of a far-reaching desire for a more educated workforce.”

In 1987,
when then Governor Booth Gardner was encouraging the Washington Legislature
to pass legislation bringing the Schools
for the 21st Century pilot project for education reform to Washington
State, Gardner also brought his friend, Marc Tucker, to the state to testify
before the Legislature in the matter. At a hearing held by the Senate
Education Committee in February 1998, citizen researchers in Washington
State exposed the failure of the Schools for the 21st Century pilot project;
a pilot project which was the springboard for education reform in Washington
State and across the nation.

Shrontz
sat on the Governor’s Council on Education Reform and Funding (GCERF)
in Washington State, created on May 16, 1991, by then Governor Booth Gardner
by executive order. Marc Tucker acted in the capacity of “expert consultant’
to GCERF.

In 1994,
when then President Clinton signed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act
into law at the Zamorano Fine Arts Academy in San Diego, California, Clinton’s
speech on that occasion recognized the presence of Frank Shrontz at the
ceremony.

On September
19, 1996, Ron
Woodard, President of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, made the
following remarks at a Seattle Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting:

“…25 percent of
Seattle’s high school students dropped out of school in 1995 — that’s
a frightening prospect for Boeing or any other company here to consider.

… To continue to
be the world’s No. 1 manufacturer of commercial airplanes, Boeing must
have the best educated and mostly highly skilled people in the world
working for us.”

To this
day Boeing continues to give it’s time, energy, and money to implementing
education reform in Washington State.

In March
1996, the nation’s governor’s and top corporate leaders came together
at the National Education Summit at IBM’s conference center in New York.
From this summit came a new organization, Achieve, led by six governors
and six corporate leaders. Frank Shrontz was one of the six corporate
leaders appointed to head this new organization. On March 28, 1996, The
Washington Post published “Corporations Vow to Favor States That
Boost Academic Standards” which states, in part,

“Most of the nation’s
governors and more than 40 corporate chiefs approved the idea at their
national education summit here to put pressure on states to demand more
from students. They said, ‘We commit to considering the quality of a
state’s academic standards and student achievement levels as a high-priority
factor in determining business location decisions.’”

Achieve’s
website would, in 1997, confirm this commitment on the part of businesses,
stating in its Annual Report,

“Generally, business
location decisions take years of careful research and planning, and
few such decisions have been made in the year since the Summit. Still,
a handful of companies have demonstrated their commitment to base such
decisions, in part, on whether states and communities have high academic
standards and/or student achievement levels.”

To this
end, Achieve vowed to establish and make available to businesses state
and school district standards and “academic” achievement levels. In return
business vowed to not locate in states considered to have unacceptable
standards (exit outcomes) and achievement levels (measured by the state
assessment tool).

In 2001,
after many, many years and a multitude of tax incentives and concessions
to the company, Boeing moved its corporate offices out of Washington State,
relocating them to Chicago, Illinois. It was not the first or last economic
blow dealt Washington State by Boeing. Since 1998, Boeing has laid off
20,000 workers in Washington State.

In that
same year (March 9, 2001) John Warner, a Boeing executive, wrote a glowing
opinion published in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, in which he claimed that “Nationally, Washington
is often cited as a model of how to do school reform right.”

A scant
twenty-one months later, however, on December 21, 2002, bold headlines
appeared in the South
County Journal: “Boeing may build new, efficient jet out of area –
State must become more competitive, Mulally says” further stating, in
the article,

“Boeing Commercial
Airlines CEO Alan Mulally told reporters Friday that the company could
build the plane at its Everett plant, but warned that it ‘absolutely
could build it out of state’ if Washington can’t find ways to deal with
transportation issues, education and tax structure.” (underlining
added for emphasis)

Education
researchers across the state were understandably incensed by this sudden
charge on the part of Boeing that Washington’s education system somehow
didn’t measure up. After all, it wasn’t parents sitting on all those committees,
councils, boards, commissions, and restructuring teams; parents weren’t
invited.

But
Boeing was. And through its participation on all the various committees,
councils, boards, commissions and restructuring teams, Boeing has had
more influence on the direction education has taken in Washington State
than any other entity in the state.

To now
point to education as a consideration of whether Boeing would build the
7E7 Dreamliner in Washington State was an open admission that the very
education system Boeing pushed for and helped build in Washington State
isn’t measuring up.

Adding
insult to injury, citizen complaints of undue influence by Boeing, made
in 1997, were ignored by the Washington State Legislature.

In an
eleventh hour deal, most of the details of which have been kept from Washington
citizens by the governor’s office in violation of the Washington State
Public Disclosure Act, then Governor Gary Locke made a multitude of concessions
to Boeing to keep the manufacturing of the 7E7 Dreamliner in Washington
State. What citizens do know is that Boeing will benefit from …

1, almost
$3.2 billion in tax concessions to Boeing over the next 20 years; 2, $24 million to build and operate a training center for 7E7
workers; 3, an overhaul of the states employment-insurance system that
resulted in a decreased in benefits to laid off workers but saves money
for businesses state-wide; 4, Washington taxpayers shouldering the expense of improving
the rail system between Everett and the Puget Sound and to making some
improvements in the Port of Everett.

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For
the sake of all the children of Washington State who are not getting an
education by any measurable objective standard in the government schools,
and in lieu of stopping the undue influence being afforded Boeing in the
area of education, maybe it would have been better to have helped Boeing
pack its bags.

Mother and wife, Stuter has spent the past ten
years researching systems theory with a particular emphasis on education.
She home schooled two daughters, now grown and on their own. She has worked
with legislators, both state and federal, on issues pertaining to systems
governance and education reform. She networks nationwide with other researchers
and citizens concerned with the transformation of our nation. She has
traveled the United States and lived overseas.